How will these resources help you?

If you were to look at photographs of mass protests, you could be led to believe that all British suffragettes were white. Indeed, non-white members of the movement were scarce – partly because there were so few women of colour living in Edwardian Britain – but you can find stories of their efforts if you know where to look. The involvement of prominent South-Asian women in the British suffragette movement is actually quite well documented. However, such women were few in number and were relatively privileged, so are not necessarily representative of South-Asian women in Britain at the time. Another issue to take into account is how South-Asian women are labelled in the reading material. The period term ‘Indian women’ is often used and may mean that pupils from a Bangladeshi or Pakistani heritage fail to relate to their stories because they associate the term ‘Indian’ with the modern state of India. However, at the time of the British Raj, the whole sub-continent was referred to as India and thus the label covers women who came from areas that are now part of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hence, the use of the politically neutral term of ‘South-Asian’ in this material.